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The Cultural Center: Architecture as Cultural Policy in Postwar Europe

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The Cultural Center: Architecture as Cultural Policy in Postwar Europe
Author(s): Kenny Cupers
Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 74, No. 4 (December 2015), pp.
464-484
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians
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The Cultural Center:
Architecture as Cultural Policy in Postwar Europe
kenny cupers
University of Basel
W
hen the Stadthalle of Chemnitz, then named
Karl-Marx-Stadt, opened in October 1974,
officials touted the modern building as exem-
plary of the German Democratic Republic’s cultural policy.1
“In the German Democratic Republic,” the policy maker
Hans Koch claimed, “there is no vast mass of anonymous
‘consumers’ consuming the fare placed before it by an élite
of ‘creators.’ Cultural progress is increasingly being seen as
a creative process in which everyone participates.”2 To facili-
tate such culture—which could range from J. S. Bach and
Bertolt Brecht to folk dancing and clay sculpting—the multi-
functional complex featured an array of meeting spaces and
a large flexible hall that could host anything from theater
performances to exhibitions, dance parties, and conferences
(Figures 1 and 2). In light of the GDR’s regime of censorship,
surveillance, and repression, the calls for participation under-
lying this project can easily be dismissed as the ideological
mirage of a puppet state. Yet a similar rhetoric accompanied
the multifunctional culture halls that were being built on
both sides of the Iron Curtain at this time. Some, like the
Maison pour Tous of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines on the out-
skirts of Paris, resembled the Stadthalle in formal and func-
tional terms. This government-funded building, literally a
“house for all,” was to be a participatory machine for making
community. Like the Stadthalle at Karl-Marx-Stadt, it com-
prised a flexible performance hall, workshops, meeting
spaces, and a restaurant, while also adding a music school.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 74, no. 4 (December 2015),
464–484. ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2015 by the Society
of Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of
California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/
journals.php?p=reprints, or via email: jpermissions@ucpress.edu. DOI: 10.1525/
jsah.2015.74.4.464.
464
And it was laid out on a similar hexagonal grid, allowing its
various spaces to blur into one another (Figures 3 and 4).
The similarity between these building projects is striking,
especially when we consider their radically different political
and ideological contexts. It is not a coincidence that can be
explained simply as a result of transnational exchange among
architects across the Cold War divide. In order to understand
the reasons for this correspondence, we must expand our
analytical purview to include the governmental regimes
underlying the production of these architectural forms.
The idea of culture as policy—that culture can be rationally
and comprehensively administered, including through
architecture—was a product of state bureaucratization dur-
ing the postwar period. Government involvement in culture
and the arts can be traced back much further, to the forma-
tion of the modern state in Europe and the establishment of
public institutions such as theaters and museums.3 Only in
the postwar period, however, did the term cultural policy
emerge in national politics and international debates, denot-
ing an assemblage of ideological principles, legislative texts,
and administrative practices. This development is what
underlay the large-scale building programs for new cultural
institutions in the postwar decades, not just in the GDR
and France but also in West Germany, the United Kingdom,
Belgium, the Netherlands, and other European countries.
With their combination of artistic and recreational facilities,
the modern culture halls often dwarfed—if not in size
then at least in quantity—the classical theaters of previous
centuries.
Despite the massive shift these buildings represented for
how “culture” was managed in postwar Europe, little has
been written about the role of architecture in this process.
The few existing architectural histories of culture halls are
largely divorced from the cultural and political history of

postwar Europe.4 Following the emergent discipline of
transnational history, architectural historians have recently
begun to examine the politics of global circulation shaping
modern architecture in the postwar period. 5 This article
extends such scholarship by demonstrating how an impor-
tant but overlooked type of institution, which proliferated
Figure 1 Rudolf Weißer,
Stadthalle, Chemnitz (then
Karl-Marx-Stadt), GDR, opened
in 1974: 1, foyer; 2, large
performance hall; 13, small
performance hall; 17, foyer; 24,
greenhouse; 26, brasserie; 27,
hotel restaurant; 30 and 31, self-
service restaurants (Architektur
der DDR, no. 4 [1975], 229).
across the Cold War divide, helped reshape the very defini-
tion of “culture” throughout much of Europe.
Analyzing the roles of bureaucrats, policy makers, and
designers, the article reveals how culture became an explicit
domain of state policy and why the architecture of modern
cultural centers or culture halls became central to this
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 465
Figure 2 Rudolf Weißer,
Stadthalle, Chemnitz, GDR,
opened in 1974 (photo by
Reinhard Höll, 2006).

Figure 3 Pierre Venencie,

Maison pour Tous, Saint-
Quentin-en-Yvelines,
France, opened in 1975
(Recherche & Architecture
35 [1978], 40).

466 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
Figure 4 Pierre Venencie, Maison pourTous, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France, opened in 1975 (photo by Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Communauté d’agglomération).
project. The discussion focuses on the GDR and France to
illustrate the significance of this Cold War European project
beyond the radically different political uses of such institu-
tions in their national contexts. Stated intentions and archi-
tectural design reveal little about the role culture halls
actually played in people’s everyday lives. Examining these
spaces across the Cold War divide in Europe, however,
reveals how modern architecture articulated cultural politics
in which participation was harnessed to bolster the interven-
tion of the state in everyday life—whether through seem-
ingly unqualified support, as in France, or oppressive
regulation, as in the GDR.
Cultivation and Recreation
The culture hall is an institutional type with diverse histori-
cal precedents. Postwar policy makers and architects saw the
culture hall as the modern answer to Europe’s grand tradition
of building public institutions for the cultivation of good
taste and civic responsibility. Since the popularization of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Bildungstheater at the end of
the eighteenth century, intellectual elites had upheld the
theater—and other institutions of high culture—as a means
for the intellectual and spiritual development of the citizenry.6
Nevertheless, cultural institutions in the nineteenth century
were more often geared toward amusement. For example,
in Germany the Stadthalle was developed as a specific type
of urban institution for staging bourgeois sociability. The
Stadthalle was a large, multipurpose hall used for concerts,
banquets, and exhibitions.7 Other important historical prec-
edents to the culture hall were the “house of the people” and
the settlement house, which were late nineteenth-century
working-class and reform institutions.8 The house of the
people, variously called casa del popolo, Volkshaus, maison du
peuple, or volkshuis, was an independent space for political
discussion, associational life, and popular culture. Such
locations were established by socialist and workers’ move-
ments across continental Europe.9 In the 1920s, the Soviets
set up similar institutions, which they called workers’ clubs;
these were meant to promote a new, communist proletarian
culture.10
The designers of the culture halls in the second half of the
twentieth century drew on the histories and forms of these
older institutions.11 In doing so, they merged the competing
interests of the bourgeoisie and the working class. This
convergence was a result of the transformation of public
welfare from a collection of class-based civil-society initia-
tives to a bureaucratic state-led regime of mass provision.
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 467
Underlying the development of culture halls was a new
approach to culture. Even though historically class-based
distinctions between high and low culture persisted, the
postwar state now approached culture as a neutral collection
of goods and services for which it would assume responsibil-
ity of distribution by means of cultural “facilities.” The belief
was that culture could now be rationally administered, just
like access to water or health care. Despite important national
differences—the United Kingdom, for example, in contrast
to Germany, had relatively limited public intervention in the
arts before the establishment of the Arts Council of Great
Britain in 1946—this desire for rationality was at the basis of
cultural policy across Europe.12
Not surprisingly, the legacy of European fascism in cul-
tural policy remained unmentioned in discussions at the
time. Yet the shift away from class-based interests in cultural
affairs and toward a “comprehensive” approach to governing
culture would likely have been unthinkable without the
far-reaching cultural and recreational programs established
by fascist governments during the 1930s. The German
organization Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) and
the Italian-fascist Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (National
Recreational Club) had drawn countless people into the
totalitarian project.13 After World War II, Western European
policy makers were eager to avoid any semblance of such
totalitarian control over the private sphere. Nevertheless,
state intervention in culture and the arts did not disappear
in France, West Germany, and elsewhere—although officials
emphasized that their cultural policy in no way shaped the
content of artistic creation.14 Eastern European rulers were
equally vigorous in their denunciations of fascism, but in
many cases they continued to exert direct control over cultural
affairs, both public and private. The GDR’s far-reaching
surveillance apparatus suppressed artistic expression that
did not seem to support official ideology. At the same time,
it cultivated what were once bourgeois, private hobbies as the
cultural carriers of socialism. The Kulturbund, an important
state control organ, encouraged hundreds of thousands of
East Germans to join hobby communities and take up stamp
collecting or the study of local history.15
Despite these antithetical trajectories, Western and Eastern
European states shared more than just a long history of gov-
ernment intervention in the arts. Their cultural policies were
based on shared assumptions about the relation between cul-
ture and citizenship. Even though state-led modernization
shed the overtly ideological agendas of nineteenth-century
social movements, cultural policy continued to rely on a
lofty, if vaguely defined, ideal of cultivating citizens. The
ideal of Bildung, or self-cultivation, was based on the assump-
tion that subjectivity could be shaped and perfected through
education, art, and philosophy and that such cultivation,
in turn, would shape society.16 This assumption continued to
468 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
underlie cultural policies throughout postwar Europe. The
older notion of making cultured citizens was thus grafted, in
an at times unrecognizably diluted version, onto the postwar
ethos of state-led modernization.
In the GDR, officials reframed the ideal of Bildung by
de-emphasizing its individualistic basis in favor of the collec-
tive and by situating it within the Soviet artistic doctrine of
socialist realism.17 Even though Soviet officials initially
denounced the “degenerate formalism” of the 1920s, social-
ist realism relied on the modernist notion of art as a vehicle
in the formation of political subjectivity. Instead of the for-
malist road, which meant breaking with bourgeois culture
but accepting the institution of art, socialist realism aimed
to unite art and life by radically democratizing only those
elements of bourgeois culture that were deemed conducive
to making socialist subjects.18 The GDR’s rulers sought to
make cultivated and spiritually elevated socialist citizens,
and the construction of Soviet-inspired palaces of culture
(Kulturpaläste) was a primary means of achieving this goal.
Initially built near industrial locations, these new institutions
were animated by the workers’ unions of the country’s large
state-managed companies under the aegis of the Socialist
United Party. Even if such institutions facilitated working-
class culture and fostered collectivity rather than individual
experience, officials conceived of them as conduits of classical
Bildungsgut (educational heritage)—in particular the works
of Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.19 This is what legitimated
the historicist, often neoclassical designs of the first genera-
tion of postwar Soviet bloc culture halls. “National heritage”
was thus made instrumental to the state project of building
German socialism—spurring workers’ productivity while at
the same time fostering national unity.20
The state project of cultivating citizens also shaped cul-
tural policy in postwar France, even if the specific methods
and political goals differed radically from those in the GDR.
France’s Ministry of Culture was created in 1959 under the
leadership of André Malraux, a renowned intellectual and
personal friend of Charles de Gaulle. Malraux stated that
one of the ministry’s main goals was to “render accessible
the masterpieces of humanity, and first of all France, to the
largest possible number of Frenchmen.”21 Despite its popu-
list allusions, the “culture” of Malraux’s cultural policy was
first and foremost high culture, including the canonical
works of art from previous centuries as well as contemporary
modernist art and literature, but excluding traditionalist and
socialist realist art. Yet, as in the GDR, culture was presented
as a basic right of all citizens, to be guaranteed and adminis-
tered by the state. Malraux’s government officers summa-
rized the goal of French cultural policy: to “provide art books
and classical music records to the dock workers of Le Havre,
or to play Shakespeare at Ménilmontant” (a working-class
part of Paris).22 Such aspirations masked the continued rule
of cultural elites under the welfare state and their growing
anxiety about the impact of mass culture on French society.
Some libertarian voices in France opposed what they under-
stood to be a technocratic and elitist approach to culture.
Nevertheless, for the majority of politicians, state involve-
ment in culture meant progress, democracy, and national
grandeur.23 Access to high culture would promote self-
cultivation, and “personal development” (épanouissement) was
a corollary to national development. Like the economy,
policy makers claimed, “culture” could be comprehensively
planned.24 And in a nation as centralized as France, access to
high culture meant territorial distribution, ensuring that
those living in the provinces had as much exposure to culture
as those living in Paris. Central to Malraux’s policies, there-
fore, was the construction of maisons de la culture—funded
partly by the state and partly by local authorities—in provin-
cial towns across France.25
In addition to the goal of cultivating citizens, cultural
policy across Cold War Europe was shaped by the shared
challenge to accommodate new forms of mass recreation
and popular culture. In the early 1960s, the sociologist Joffre
Dumazedier proclaimed the advent of a new “leisure civiliza-
tion” of paid holidays, popular music and movies, and an
explosion of new hobby cultures.26 In the GDR, many of
these consumer pleasures remained more aspirational than
real. Yet the Bitterfelder Weg, a top-down cultural reform
project coinciding with the Khrushchev Thaw, can be inter-
preted as a shy nod to such a leisure society. The reform was
presented as a shift “from the art-loving to the artistically
active worker.”27 Familiarizing workers with the “treasures
of art and literature” was not enough—building socialism
required engaging workers’ “cultural and creative forces.”28
Underneath this rhetoric of a new, active role for the socialist
citizen lurked the regime’s anxiety about controlling con-
sumer culture. While the East German state initially relied
on strict rationing, officials during the “socialist sixties”
showed more acceptance of the fact that popular leisure and
consumption had become constitutive aspects of everyday
life—even if many citizens’ material needs and desires
remained painfully unfulfilled. 29 Consequently, cultural
policy should aim not just to cultivate socialist citizens but
also to recreate them. This shift provided new impetus for
the design of cultural institutions such as the Stadthalle
of Karl-Marx-Stadt and signaled a softer, more insidious
approach to instilling socialism.30 Citizens would be given
more opportunities to “participate” in culture even as state
control over their everyday lives increased.
Similar questions about the kinds of culture that should
guide state policy arose on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
In Western Europe, cultural policy needed to accommodate
not just mass recreation and consumerism in an age of
affluence but also the growing influence of youth, civil rights,
and leftist social movements that criticized traditional dis-
tinctions between high and low culture. The more funda-
mental critiques of universalism might have been far removed
from the concerns of policy makers, at least before 1968, but
the “culture” of cultural policy across Western Europe grad-
ually shifted from a focus on the highbrow arts to an empha-
sis on how culture is socially embedded. In France, Malraux’s
assumptions about democratizing access to high culture
were under increasing attack during the 1960s. In their land-
mark study of 1966, L’amour de l’art: Les musées et leur public,
Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel showed that the experi-
ence of art museums was systematically socially determined—
comfortable to the elite, unsettling to those least educated.31
Their conclusion was that museums, rather than democratiz-
ing high culture, actually upheld and even reinforced the
barriers of social class. Such studies prompted a reorientation
of cultural policy toward what experts called the “sociocul-
tural,” and it had direct repercussions for the conception of
cultural centers.32 Cultural institutions—went the argument,
especially on the political Left—should become sites of par-
ticipatory production and not just passive consumption.
Rather than satisfying existing needs, policy makers insisted,
such institutions should “awaken and stimulate the demand,
and thus help the public to discover new ways of achieving
their cultural aspirations.”33 This ambition informed the
conception of institutions such as the Maison pour Tous.
The architecture of the culture halls that were built
throughout much of postwar Europe, particularly in the
1960s and 1970s, is explained not just by the transnational
spread of architectural modernism but also, first and fore-
most, by the shared assumptions and challenges of cultural
policy. As popular recreation entered into the purview of
policies aimed at cultivating citizens, governments increas-
ingly cast citizens as active participants in culture. This is
why culture halls across Cold War Europe facilitated not
only classical theater and concerts, events at which people
would be “passive consumers,” but also recreational, com-
munity, and sports events in which they would be active par-
ticipants. Such “participation” was not a vehicle of political
emancipation, however; instead, it bolstered the legitimacy
of the state. Even if culture halls were no longer conceived
as classical temples of high culture, one assumption remained
intact: that culture—high and low—had a predetermined
effect on people, and, therefore, this effect could be pro-
duced by the state through both policy and design. This is
where modern architecture came in.
Polyvalence and Integration
In France, the conception of maisons de la culture was directly
informed by Malraux’s ambition to democratize access to
artistic masterpieces. Because democratization implied
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 469
Figure 5 Pierre Sonrel,
maison de la culture,
Amiens, France, opened in
1965 (postcard courtesy of
David Liaudet).
geographic decentralization, the resulting building projects
were largely situated in the provinces. Even though some of
them, such as the successful cultural center in Bourges, were
housed in existing buildings, Malraux emphasized architec-
tural modernism for symbolic and programmatic reasons.34
Unlike the bourgeois theaters and operas of the nineteenth
century, the maison de la culture should not be an isolated
monument, he believed, but “at once a popular, familiar place
and a cultural shrine, a kind of ‘café du commerce’ and secu-
lar cathedral.”35 The new cultural institutions needed to
attract people of all ages and backgrounds and make them
feel at home and engaged with the artistic activities and dis-
plays the institutions facilitated. Officials also promoted
architectural transparency to stimulate the engagement of
passersby and visitors, and advocated seating arrangements
in auditoriums that would not imply social class distinctions
but instead suggest egalitarianism in spectatorship. Some
administrators even proposed auxiliary services, such as
snack bars or nurseries, for the convenience of families and
those coming directly from work. Even though its primary
aim was to offer elevating aesthetic experiences, the maison
de la culture needed to attract everyone.36
As a result of these policy goals, the first generation
of maisons de la culture shared an architectural vision. Each
would be multifunctional, meaning that in addition to a large
performance hall, the building would contain exhibition
spaces, meeting spaces, and a variety of spaces for more
specialized uses, such as a library, a discotheque, a television
room, a restaurant, a bar, or a day nursery.37 A second impor-
tant feature was polyvalence, defined as the possibility of
using given spaces in different ways. Movable partitions
and other mobile architectural elements allowed foyers to be
converted into exhibition halls, and auditoriums facilitated
470 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
a variety of performance and event types. Polyvalence, first
articulated by interwar modernist architects in projects such
as the maison du peuple of Clichy in the Parisian suburbs
(designed by Marcel Lods, Eugène Beaudouin, Jean Prouvé,
and Vladimir Bodiansky), thus came to define the main-
stream architectural production of the postwar French wel-
fare state. The Ministry of Culture held up the maison de la
culture of Amiens, designed by Pierre Sonrel and opened in
1965, as a new standard in this regard (Figure 5). 38 The
building contained several flexible performance spaces, a
library, a television room, and a cafeteria. Its main theater
had mobile seating to allow performances with the audience
facing in different directions.39 Despite its austere exterior
appearance—a concrete post-and-lintel structure with grand
windows centered in each of its four bays—policy makers and
observers celebrated its transparency and its open character,
seeing it as “a vital element of the city, in sync with the city
from the morning until the night.”40
Critical voices quickly emerged during the 1960s, how-
ever. The critics denounced Malraux’s built projects for
failing to create inclusive spaces, despite their break with
traditional bourgeois institutions. A 1965 government report
warned that many “factors of cultural inhibition” precluded
participation beyond the cultural elite—a conclusion similar
to the one reached by Bourdieu and Darbel in their museum
study. In addition to material barriers, such as entry prices
and geographic distance, the report pointed to social barriers,
including the architectural form, which created distanced,
“sacred” spaces removed from the everyday.41 By 1968, only
eight maisons de la culture had been opened, with an additional
dozen or so under construction or in the planning stage.42
Perhaps because they had remained symbols of the elite,
many of them were occupied by protesters during the civil
unrest of May 1968. At that time the buildings effectively
served as sites of participatory democracy, veritable public
“forums,” albeit not in the way state officials had intended.
The maison de la culture of Amiens, for instance, became a
vibrant space of impromptu public debates, community
gatherings, and political protest. Protesters demanded the
elimination of admission fees as a way of taking down what
they experienced as the invisible walls of culture.43
After 1968, discussions about the architecture and poli-
tics of the maisons de la culture changed fundamentally in
tone. The Ministry of Culture now explicitly criticized its
own projects as “soulless places of cultural consumption”
whose “sumptuous architecture” dissuaded anyone but the
cultural elite from participating.44 In a speech delivered at
Grenoble in summer 1968, Malraux proclaimed that the
maisons de la culture should not just serve artistic display and
diffusion but should “in the first place provoke interroga-
tion, contestation even, and engender dialogue.” To do so,
they needed to become “the unfinished image of a living
culture, for those who participate in it and create it.”45 The
challenge after May 1968 was to make cultural institutions
spaces of creative participation rather than just places of
consumption or diffusion—not unlike the stated goal of the
Bitterfelder Weg.46 At stake was the very definition of cul-
ture; even Malraux, the ardent protector of France’s cultural
heritage, now proclaimed, “There is no culture without lei-
sure.”47 By the late 1960s, Dumazedier’s leisure civilization
was a reality and had become a central subject of public
policy. Moreover, the view that leisure was culture corre-
sponded to attitudes among community workers, who had
long advocated for the integration of social, cultural, and
community facilities in France’s newly built suburban
developments.
Despite this revolution, the architectural conception of
the maisons de la culture was not entirely discarded. The ear-
lier concepts of flexibility, polyvalence, and spatial openness
instead gained a more radical political charge. Following
widespread calls in the years after 1968 to deinstitutionalize
society, architects such as Ionel Schein hailed polyvalence as
a tool to dismantle the institutional walls of culture itself.48
No longer sacralized or privileged spaces of display, maisons
de la culture should become “crossing points” rather than pal-
aces. Monumentality was considered anathema, and policy
makers instead envisioned “light, malleable facilities that
allow all forms of communication and artistic activities.”49
The Maison pour Tous in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines,
designed by Pierre Venencie in 1971–72, registers these new
social and architectural ambitions (see Figures 3 and 4).50
The cultural center was a key element in the master plan for
the new urban center of Les Sept Mares, part of the new
town of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. (President Charles de
Gaulle launched the French new towns in 1965 as a way to
decentralize the Paris region and spur regional economic
development.) 51 Funded by the Ministries of Culture,
National Education, Youth and Sports, and Public Health,
among other institutions, the Maison pour Tous was a product
of the centralized state and integrated art and performance
spaces with a variety of community facilities.52 The building
comprised a large multipurpose hall, an auditorium, a school
of music, and a restaurant (which served the nearby second-
ary school), as well as smaller spaces for meetings, games, and
workshops, a nursery, administrative spaces, and an apart-
ment for the concierge.53 This mix was engineered to engage
people from a variety of backgrounds and age groups. A res-
taurant, for instance, was integrated into the complex in
order to maximize its daytime usage.54 A similar rationale
guided the creation of a meeting space for the elderly, which
was situated in a quiet zone of the building with a view onto
the park.
Formally, the program was organized on a hexagonal
grid that followed the shape of the main performance hall.
Designers in France and abroad had been experimenting
with such hexagonal formal systems during the mid-1960s,
and the design had gained traction among more mainstream
architects in the 1970s. Venencie himself had already built a
youth center designed as the aggregation of hexagonal
prisms.55 For the architect, such formal systems promised to
“give a maximum of suppleness to the organization of
performances.”56 This quality was most important for the
main performance hall. With its mobile seating structure,
it allowed for varying types of scenarios, including theater,
cinema, balls, conferences, and exhibitions (Figure 6).57 The
peripheral circulation around this hexagonal hall provided
access on different levels and to the auxiliary workshop and
meeting spaces. Circular and hexagonal theater spaces such
as this had emerged in the 1960s in response to an interna-
tional movement advocating experimental theater forms,
first tested on a modest scale and subsequently employed in
the design of mass performance spaces.58
Venencie responded to the widespread calls for deinstitu-
tionalization by inserting three types of public space into his
design. Running through the middle of the building was a
covered public walkway, which negotiated the differences
in levels between the natural terrain and the dalle, or raised
platform, onto which the entire urban development was
elevated to separate pedestrians from vehicular traffic below
(Figure 7). In addition, a central foyer functioned as the pub-
lic “plaza” of the complex, connecting directly to the
restaurant, cafeteria, and main performance spaces. Finally,
the roof level was designed as a publicly accessible “sculpture
garden.” The music school, also located on this level, was
organized into separate, well-insulated pavilions for music
practice. These pavilions transformed the roof into a mineral
landscape for strolling and playing (Figure 8). The interior
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 471
street, the plaza, and the sculpture garden were design fea-
tures that, at least metaphorically, brought urban public
space into the institution. Despite the building’s massive
appearance, the choices of materials were motivated by the
idea of avoiding the impression of an imposing institution
and creating “an intriguing and welcoming, immediately
familiar” experience.59 The soft, brownish brick used for the
exterior walls and the oxidized copper used for the roofs
produced an informal aesthetic image, as opposed to the
prestigious modernist look of Malraux’s institutions, such as
Sonrel’s maison de la culture in Amiens (see Figure 5). The
structure’s material heaviness was meant to evoke not monu-
mentality but a porous environment that would attract users
and surprise them as they appropriated it.60
Three years before the official opening, planners had
already begun organizing cultural and social activities to
welcome the arriving population in the new town of Saint-
Quentin-en-Yvelines.61 They subsequently established
the Association pour la Promotion des Activités Socio-
culturelles de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (APASC) for the
center’s cultural programming.62 The goal of this association was
to “develop the creative capacities of everyone” and to
“reduce that enormous gap between the minority of creators,
inventors, and producers of new models, and the large
majority of those undergoing these ‘messages.’ ”63 Cultural
programming would thus not only produce creative, partici-
patory citizens but also overcome the gap between elite and
disadvantaged social groups. The architecture of the complex
worked both for and against these social ambitions. Because
many of its interior spaces were publicly accessible, the build-
ing was notoriously difficult to manage. Some spaces were
impossible to secure, so gates and alarm systems were added,
and the exhibition area was moved to one of the performance
spaces a few years after the opening.64 At the same time, the
building’s porosity facilitated efforts to engage a diversity of
users. Its spaces proved ideal for hosting experimental public
events, drawing in youth collectives and immigrant workers
often living on the margins of French society. Figure 6 Pierre Venencie, Maison pour Tous, Saint-Quentin-en-
Similar cultural centers were built across France during Yvelines, France, six options for the organization of the main
the 1970s. While they effectively broadened the types of performance space (“Maison pour Tous d’Elancourt,” Techniques
cultural events and activities that received government sup- et Architecture, no. 310 [Aug./Sept. 1976], 76–77).

port, policy makers’ goals of participatory citizenship and

“cultural democratization” were rarely if ever fully realized.
A 1976 government report explicitly warned of the naïveté
of assuming that contact with art and culture would auto-
matically lead to democratization.65 This realization was
the death knell for Malraux’s optimistic cultural policies and
the modernist architectural experiments that had helped
shape it. While cultural centers offered new ways for people
to come together and enjoy themselves, their polyvalent and
integrated forms of architecture did not, in and of them-
selves, remold participants into participatory citizens.
Monumentality and Communication
Because the GDR was directly shaped by its relationship
with the Soviet Union, so too was the design of its cultural
institutions, at least initially. With the rise of Stalinism, Soviet
architects abandoned the modernist idea of workers’ clubs and
instead built “palaces of culture” in historicist styles. In the
early 1950s, the GDR adapted this Stalinist type of architecture
and its underlying ideology of socialist realism by looking to
“national traditions.”66 For Germany, the architecture of Karl
Friedrich Schinkel was key.67 Following his neoclassical designs

472 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
 Figure 7 Pierre
Venencie, Maison pour
Tous, Saint-Quentin-
en-Yvelines, France,
opened in 1975 (photo
by J.-B. Schwebig,
1977).

Figure 8 Pierre
Venencie, Maison pour
Tous, Saint-Quentin-en-
Yvelines, France, roof
level, opened in 1975
(“Les 7 Mares
Elancourt-Maurepas,”
CRÉÉ Architecture
intérieure, no. 45
[Dec.1976], 22).

for public institutions, GDR architects developed a monumen-
tal prototype for the Kulturpalast (Figure 9).68 Published in the
regime’s official organ Deutsche Architektur, the design featured
a symmetrical building layout with a large theater space, vesti-
bule, foyer, and side wings housing auxiliary spaces such as club
rooms. Its form reflected a dual cultural policy: small meeting
spaces for hobbies and popular culture were separated from,
and sidelined by, the central shrine to high culture that was the
theater space. The theater took on special importance in the
making of citizens in the Eastern bloc, and in the GDR in
particular. Its strong tradition of politically engaged theater,
following the work of Brecht, among others, soon informed
changes to the design of new theater spaces and Kulturpaläste.69
Initially, however, the regime employed neoclassicism as a
political message, speaking antagonistically to the modern
architecture of the capitalist West.
Since only a few large state-owned companies had the
funds to build in the first half of the 1950s, only a small num-
ber of Kulturpaläste were built. Most of these followed the
published prototypes; for instance, the stripped-down

T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 473
classicist Kulturhaus of Maxhütte in Unterwellenborn,
designed by Hanns Hopp, Josef Kaiser, and Thomas Reimer
(Figure 10). Despite the architects’ insistence on historical
forms to promote both “community experience” and “critical
art appreciation,” the project was built with modern industrial
techniques.70 Even if the ideal of Bildung through high culture
shaped such designs, builders on the ground were more aware
of working-class needs for recreational spaces. For the Kul-
turhaus of Rüdersdorf, finished in 1956, the builder, Emil Lei-
bold, was mandated to use a standard prototype. He
nevertheless questioned its practical functionality and argued
for a multifunctional hall instead of a classical theater space.
This was something officials were just beginning to consider
on their own as the state gradually abandoned Stalinist neo-
classicism in the second half of the 1950s.71
The mass construction of cultural institutions in the
GDR did not take off until the 1960s. By this time, the
Soviet Union had reevaluated its position on modernist
architecture, and GDR architects cautiously followed suit.
In addition to shifting to a modernist idiom, the new designs
articulated a different, broader concept of culture. A key
player in shaping the new Kulturpalast type, even more than
architects or party elites, was the Büro für Technologie
kultureller Einrichtungen (Bureau for the Technology of
Cultural Facilities), later renamed the Institut für Kultur-
bauten (Institute for Cultural Buildings), established in 1960 Figure 9 Standard plan for Kulturhaus, 1953 (Hellmuth Thunert and
and led by Klaus Wever and Wladimir Rubinow. 72 The Herbert Reichert, “Schemapläne für Kulturhäuser,” Deutsche
institute proposed two fundamental changes to the Kultur- Architektur, no. 4 [1953], 171).
palast. First, the program would center on a new type of
space: a flexible, multipurpose performance hall that would to industry but in the heart of the city. Planning was effectively
allow artists and nonartists to be brought together in the way coordinated with urban renewal projects, which during the
set out by the Bitterfelder Weg cultural reformers. Even if 1960s were cast as a way to turn existing cities into socialist
this ambition remained unacknowledged, it reinscribed ones.75 State officials continued to stress the need for monu-
in GDR theater design the modernism of the 1910s and mentality, so that the Kulturpalast symbolically marked the
1920s, from the Festspielhaus Hellerau designed by Heinrich proud transition to socialism on the skyline. At the same time,
Tessenow and Adolf Appia in 1912 and the Bauhaus experi- these officials increasingly emphasized the communicative role
ments of Oskar Schlemmer to Walter Gropius’s unexecuted of Kulturpaläste in the city and their function in everyday life.
Total Theater project (Figure 11). Such modernist theater The Kulturpalast in Dresden registers these changing
designs had already focused on the reorganization of stage approaches. The first design ideas from 1951 included a
and audience, insisting on a more direct and dynamic rela- monumental tower, a strong theme in GDR urbanism,
tionship between spectacle and spectator in order to invest reminiscent of Bruno Taut’s early twentieth-century con-
the theater with a renewed social function.73 Yet during the cept of the Stadtkrone (city crown) as a representation of
postwar decades, such experimental and interactive strategies national community.76 In 1959, the Dresden City Council
had become widespread across Europe and thus no longer organized a competition for an enormous House of Social-
represented a particularly socialist or revolutionary agenda. ist Culture, with the explicit requirement of a tower form.
Second, the institute argued for a close integration of Only one of the twenty-eight design entries, Leopold
“active and passive zones” in the building at large. Meeting Wiel’s modernist design, dispensed with the tower in favor
rooms and workshops needed to be spatially and functionally of an integrated horizontal organization (Figures 12 and
integrated with the performance spaces, so that in all spaces 13). Even though the jury insisted on monumentality and
“the public would actively process what is made and thereby modernist “formalism” was still politically sensitive at this
become the maker.”74 Unlike the Stalinist palaces of culture, time, the city council ultimately selected Wiel’s proposal,
the institutions of this new generation were located not close albeit in a reduced version. 77 The project, which was

474 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5

eventually changed in name to Kulturpalast, was built from
1967 to 1969. Its design was centered on the new type of
performance space developed by the Institut für Kultur-
bauten, with which Wiel collaborated closely.78 The main
hall had a stage that could be moved up and down, so that
a flat floor could be created for different types of events.
According to the designers, the goal of this high-tech
installation was directly political—an architectural
response to the Brechtian theme of theater as life. Because
it could put performers and spectators literally on the
same footing, the design would overcome the “capitalist
separation between producer and consumer.” 79
Figure 10 Hanns Hopp, Josef
Kaiser, and Thomas Reimer,
Kulturhaus, Maxhütte,
Unterwellenborn, GDR, 1952–
55 (photo by Uwe Klimpke).
Figure 11 Walter Gropius,
Total Theater for Erwin
Piscator, Berlin, 1927 (drawing
by unidentified artist; Harvard
Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger
Museum, Gift of Ise Gropius,
BRGA.24.145).
Some commentators even argued that because “all spaces
are public” and “the people work in all of them,” visitors
could become cultural producers in their own right, accord-
ing to their own “cultural needs.”80 Many spaces through-
out the building could work together and thus potentially
facilitate new kinds of mass events. Programmatically,
the building was designed as a ring of interconnected,
communicating spaces so that, the designers claimed,
“every space can be used with every other” (Figure 14).
The assumption was that such a layout would automati-
cally lead to cultural exchange between professional art-
ists and nonartists. How this would be concretely
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 475
Figure 12 Leopold Wiel with Institut für Kulturbauten, Kulturpalast, Dresden, 1967–69 (photo by Mahlum, 2006).
Figure 13 Leopold Wiel with
Institut für Kulturbauten,
Kulturpalast, Dresden, 1967–69
(Manfred Schröter and Wolfgang
Grösel, Dresden Kulturpalast
[Leipzig: Seemann, 1974], 4).
achieved, however, remained unclear.81 Thus, the notion
of communication did not just inform architectural pro-
gramming; it also allowed designers to articulate their
ambitions for participation, even if participation was fun-
damentally constrained by the political regime.
The project for Dresden paralleled attempts elsewhere in
Europe to design cultural institutions that would prompt
users’ participation and communication. Yet, unlike designers
such as Cedric Price, whose Fun Palace project for London in
the early 1960s took a cybernetic approach to participation
that meant the near dissolution of architectural form, the
designers of the Kulturpalast continued to emphasize tradi-
tional monumentality and what they deemed to be a more
476 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
explicitly socialist aesthetic. Opened in 1969, the building was
dotted with myriad works of public art depicting socialist
scenes—for instance, Gerhard Bondzin’s mural Wegs der roten
Fahne, which represented the German labor movement.82
East German architects, state officials, artists, and theater
makers were well aware of European design trends and
enjoyed abundant international exchange at this time. The
journal Bauten der Kultur provided extensive coverage of
Western European and Soviet bloc projects, and members of
the Institut für Kulturbauten often traveled internationally.83
Even though many of their socialist ambitions and architec-
tural aesthetics were unique to the GDR, the East German
Kulturpaläste also reflected a pan-European architectural

development. The Miesian solution, of large cubic volumes
with glazed foyers, was commonly used for public buildings
across European cities in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in
West Germany. East German architects studied flexible
designs for multiuse cultural centers in the Soviet Union as
well as the Frank van Klingeren project De Meerpaal in
Dronten, the Netherlands, which also fascinated French
architects such as Schein (Figure 15).84
A second paradigmatic project in the GDR was the
Stadthalle of Karl-Marx-Stadt by architect Rudolf Weißer,
who moved more resolutely away from monumentality to
design a place that would stimulate cultural and social
encounters (see Figures 1 and 2). As at Dresden, the project
was a key part of the master plan for the town center, which
had suffered heavy wartime damage. 85 Its construction
started in 1969 and it opened in February 1974, but the proj-
ect originated with a 1959 competition, when it was called
the Haus der Kultur und Wissenschaften (House of Culture
and Sciences).86 The initial, tower-based design evolved
significantly over the 1960s. 87 Local officials eventually
decided to use the tower not for the cultural program but for
a hotel, since the tower would be the most expensive part of
the project and the idea followed “international standards.”88
To define the program for the cultural complex itself, the
city council consulted with local associations, including the
Figure 14 Leopold Wiel with Institut für
Kulturbauten, Kulturpalast, Dresden,
program diagram (Klaus Wever, “Ein
neues Saalprinzip für kleinere
Kulturhäuser,” Scena, no. 7 [1970], 2).
Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth), about their
needs.89 The idea of a flexible, multipurpose design was thus
not only pushed by the centralized state but also embraced
at the local level.90 In what was almost a physical embodiment
of this idea, Weißer placed the hotel tower directly on top of
the Stadthalle, so that the two shared the ground-floor lobby.
The cultural complex, designed in collaboration with the
Institut für Kulturbauten, borrowed the Dresden model in
its emphasis on programmatic interconnection. Yet it offered
one key innovation: the hexagonal grid. The grid facilitated
industrialized construction methods and, more important,
allowed for a nonhierarchical spatial organization that inten-
sified possibilities for interconnection and integration
(Figure 16). The design of the Palast der Republik in Berlin
(1973–76) would further pursue this hexagonal formal
strategy while encasing the ensemble in an oblong. The
Stadthalle, by contrast, expressed its interior organization
in a composition of hexagonal prisms, abandoning axial
planning and symmetrical ordering in favor of complex,
interlocking forms. According to the designers, its varie-
gated massing expressed the building’s role as an active
“organizer” and “stimulator” of social life.91 Such inten-
tions—of functional integration and the animating role of
architecture—corresponded closely to trends across Europe
at this time, particularly in France.
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 477
Figure 15 Frank van Klingeren,
De Meerpaal, Dronten,
Netherlands, 1965 (photo by Jan
Versnel/MAI Fotoarchieven
Amsterdam, 1966).

Figure 16 Rudolf Weißer,

Stadthalle, Chemnitz, GDR,
industrialized construction
method, opened in 1974
(Architektur der DDR, no. 4 [1975],
228).

The Stadthalle was a built diagram of “cultural communi-
cation.” Its sprawling lobby was conceived as the central
crossroads that connected the various event and performance
spaces and would ensure a maximum of interaction between
people and activities. At the same time, it remained grand,
exuding a socialist splendor (Figure 17). Surprisingly, in an
echo of capitalism’s relentless fabrication of new desires,
the city council members’ explicit rationale for such archi-
tecture was its capacity to elicit unknown needs and uncon-
scious desires among visitors.92 The building included
two large multiuse performance halls designed to facilitate a
variety of public events. The designers understood the events
as forms of communication and organized the hall to accom-
modate “linear contact” (e.g., concerts or theater perfor-
mances), “ring contact” (e.g., for folk dancing or fashion
shows), and “directionless contact” (e.g., ball games or exhi-
bitions) (Figure 18).93 Open day and night, weekdays and
weekends, the Stadthalle offered programming focused on
what in official jargon was called sozialistische Unterhaltungs-
kunst (socialist entertainment art), which included anything

478 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5

Figure 18 Rudolf Weißer, Stadthalle, Chemnitz, GDR, options for
the organization of the small performance hall (Wladimir S. Rubinow,
“Die Stadthalle Karl-Marx-Stadt,” Bauten der Kultur, no. 1 [1976], 19).
Figure 17 Rudolf
Weißer, Stadthalle,
Chemnitz, GDR, main
lobby, opened in 1974
(Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-
N1005-005; photo by
Wolfgang Thieme).
from theater and cabaret to dance parties and Christmas
shows.94
Subsequent GDR culture halls embraced mass recreation
wholeheartedly. Some, like the Freizeitforum (leisure forum)
in Marzahn, incorporated a panoply of sports facilities,
becoming in effect full leisure centers.95 Official design guide-
lines published by the Institut für Kulturbauten promoted
Funktionsverflechtung—the weaving together of functions—as
the key concept for all cultural facilities.96 The term could
denote a range of concrete architectural strategies to combine
uses, create free spaces, and maximize social interaction. Yet
what made it more specific as a design strategy, according to pol-
icy makers, was the understanding of culture as “communica-
tion.”97 The Kommunikationsbereich, a distribution and traffic
area that also functioned as meeting and event space, thus
became the architectural and programmatic core of the
cultural complex.98 Just as the GDR needed to integrate
“Bildung, recreation, and gastronomy,” as Werner Prendel
argued, it also needed to build these integrated facilities “so
that the smallest economic effort will lead to the largest soci-
etal effect.”99 Even though the same logic of efficiency domi-
nated discussions of integration in France and elsewhere in
Europe, Prendel proclaimed that integrated cultural facilities
would help build socialism and create communal sociability
in the GDR’s neighborhoods and cities.100
By the 1980s, hundreds of cultural centers, small and
large, were spread across East Germany (Figure 19).101 How
they shaped the everyday experiences of East Germans is
hard to assess. Events at the GDR’s prestigious culture halls
were, almost certainly, carefully monitored, and they
excluded elements that could be interpreted as critical of the
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 479
Figure 19 Locations of GDR cultural facilities
(Kulturelle Freizeiteinrichtungen in der DDR [Gotha
Haack, 1976], Staatsbibliothek Berlin, map
collection, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und
Geschichte [bpk]).
state. The institutions were thus vehicles of state control
rather than of citizen participation—at least in the sense of
direct empowerment as it was understood in Western Europe
after 1968. Yet “participation” should be understood here in
its historical context: it was first and foremost a means for the
state to apply control in more indirect ways. With fickle
interests and a consumer culture of mopeds, cassette players,
and music bands, “youth” had become a special concern of
state officials during the 1970s. Houses of culture, with their
special youth programming, were part of a strategy to avert
potential uprisings by situating youths in settings where their
activities could be controlled (Figure 20). In such a vexed
political context, designers and policy makers not coinciden-
tally legitimated communication and Funktionsverflechtung
480 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
as architectural strategies to accommodate “spontaneous,
unprogrammed use of free time.”102
Conclusion
When seen through a Cold War lens, the culture halls of the
GDR are polar opposites to those in France or elsewhere in
Western Europe: the first were instruments of state control
intended to prevent social resistance and directly mold cul-
ture to political ends; the latter, spaces of free expression in
a market-oriented public sphere. While such a characteriza-
tion is not inaccurate, it hides as much as it reveals. Culture
halls on either side of the Iron Curtain shared correspon-
dences not only in design but also in the basic assumptions

that undergirded cultural policy. Whether in Western or
Eastern Europe, culture halls were state-funded institutions
with a specific political goal—namely, to foster a type of
citizen who would actively participate in cultural life within
specific bounds set by the state. In this way architecture par-
ticipated in the Cold War invention called “cultural policy”
and helped articulate the divergent cultural politics of social-
ism and liberal capitalism.
During the 1960s and 1970s, policy makers framed the
cultural center, perhaps paradoxically, as an institution that
was universally applicable to and independent of political
economy, or of politics altogether. In December 1967, at one
of the first conferences on cultural policy organized by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Figure 20 Cultural facilities for GDR youth
in the mid-1970s (Ruth Stein and Karsten
Kresse, “Jugendklubs als spezifische Form
kultureller Einrichtungen,” Bauten der Kultur,
no. 1 [1976], 11).
Organization (UNESCO), policy makers analyzed cultural
facilities from France to Poland and from Ecuador to the
Soviet Union as part of a single movement toward “cultural
development.”103 Even if they distinguished the different
directions cultural policy might take at the national level—
for example, the “popularization of masterpieces” versus
“workers’ education”—they emphasized that cultural policy
was fundamentally based on “making people participate” by
“endeavoring to stimulate their powers of creation.”104 In
1969, a meeting between the French and Polish delegations
to UNESCO came to similar conclusions, finding that cul-
tural policy was a tool for both individual and national dev-
elopment, irrespective of political ideology or cultural
difference. Underlying cultural policy was a vaguely defined
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 481
humanism: the “right to culture,” to be guaranteed by the
state through the construction of cultural facilities.105 The
Council of Europe was another key institution promoting
this idea. 106 As early as 1964, its Council for Cultural
Co-operation described the goal of cultural policy as
“enabling the individual at all times and throughout his life
to take advantage of the widest opportunities for cultural
development and self-fulfillment” and “to reach out beyond
the small minorities who have traditionally appreciated
‘highbrow’ activities like serious music, theatre and the fine
arts, to the broad mass of the population.”107
Such high-minded goals, however, were founded on a rela-
tionship between state and citizen that seemed universal but
was in fact political and historically determined. Jacques
Coenen, a policy maker at the Council of Europe, succinctly
voiced this paradox by pointing out that state intervention in
culture, a domain of life that most people consider essential to
their sense of privacy, freedom, and individuality, constitutes a
“dirigisme which would like to be non-dirigiste.”108 Yet, despite
such wariness, the council still advocated for a vigorously inter-
ventionist cultural policy, because “active experience [is] prefer-
able to passivity, and participation in community affairs [is]
better than exclusive preoccupation with family life and private
pursuits.”109 Many policy makers in Western Europe empha-
sized that their policies supported only the institutional frame-
work of culture rather than its content. Yet the state project
of turning passive consumers into participatory citizens was
hardly neutral, even if it was presented as such.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Prita Meier, Florian Urban, Patricia Morton, and
the anonymous peer reviewers for their insightful comments that have
helped improve this text.
2. Hans Koch, Cultural Policy in the German Democratic Republic (Paris:
UNESCO, 1975), 11.
3. See Michael Müller, ed., Autonomie der Kunst: Zur Genese und Kritik
einer bürgerlichen Kategorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972); Raymond
Williams, Culture and Society (London: Penguin, 1965).
4. On the history of cultural policy in France, see Vincent Dubois, La poli-
tique culturelle: Genèse d’une catégorie d’intervention publique (Paris: Belin,
1999); Philippe Urfalino, L’invention de la politique culturelle (Paris: La Doc-
umentation Française/Comité d’Histoire du Ministère de la Culture 1996).
On the architectural history of maisons de la culture, see Richard Klein,
“Des maisons du peuple aux maisons de la culture,” in André Malraux et
l’architecture, ed. Dominique Hervier (Paris: Moniteur, 2008). Scholarship
on cultural politics in the GDR includes Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik
in der DDR: Ein historischer Abriß (Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv,
1982); David Bathrick, The Power of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the
GDR (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). On cultural institu-
tions in the GDR, see Bruno Flierl, “Das Kulturhaus in der DDR,” in
Städtebau und Staatsbau im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper
and Hiltrud Kier (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1996); Ulrich Har-
tung, Arbeiter- und Bauerntempel: DDR-Kulturhäuser der fünfziger Jahre:
Ein architekturhistorisches Kompendium (Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep, 1996);
Christine Meyer, Kulturpaläste und Stadthallen der DDR: Anspruch und
482 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
Realität einer Bauaufgabe (Hamburg: Kova , 2005). On cultural centers in
Flanders, see Miek de Kepper, ed., Culturele centra op zoek naar een profiel
(Brussels: FEVECC, 1993). A more international perspective has been
offered recently in Alistair Fair, ed., Setting the Scene: Perspectives on Twenti-
eth-Century Theatre Architecture (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2015).
5. Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels
and Modern Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Greg
Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Tom Avermaete and
Łukasz Stanek, eds., “Cold War Transfer: Architecture and Planning from
Socialist Countries in the ‘Third World,’ ” Journal of Architecture 17, no.
13 (2012); Florian Urban, Neo-historical East Berlin: Architecture and Urban
Design in the German Democratic Republic 1970–1990 (Farnham, England:
Ashgate, 2009).
6. See Erika Fischer-Lichte, History of European Drama and Theatre
(London: Routledge, 2002), 199–201.
7. Meyer, Kulturpaläste und Stadthallen der DDR, 10–25.
8. On France, see Klein, “Des maisons du peuple aux maisons de la culture.”
9. Maurizio Degl’Innocenti, Le case del popolo in Europa: Dalle origini alla
seconda guerra mondiale (Florence: Sansoni, 1984).
10. John B. Hatch, The Formation of Working Class Cultural Institutions during
NEP: The Workers’ Club Movement in Moscow, 1921–1923 (Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Center for Russian and East European Studies, 1990).
11. For an introductory history of the “houses of culture,” see Richard
Klein and Bernard Toulier, eds., Architecture de la culture: Relais du pouvoir
européen, les réseaux de la modernité du XXe siècle 2 (Paris: Docomomo Inter-
national, 2009).
12. UNESCO, Cultural Policy: A Preliminary Study (Paris: UNESCO, 1969).
13. Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tour-
ism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
Victoria de Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organization of Leisure in
Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
14. See Studies and Research Department, French Ministry of Culture,
Some Aspects of French Cultural Policy (Paris: UNESCO, 1970), 9–10;
German UNESCO Commission, Cultural Policy in the Federal Republic of
Germany (Paris: UNESCO, 1970), 13.
15. Helmut Meier, “Der Kulturbund der DDR in den 70er Jahren:
Bestandteil des politischen Systems und Ort kultureller Selbstbestäti-
gung,” in Befremdlich anders: Leben in der DDR, ed. Evemarie Badstübner
(Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2000), 599–625.
16. On the history of Bildung in German intellectual history, see Walter
Horace Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: “Bildung” from
Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
17. I refer here to socialist realism in the arts more generally, even though
the historical trajectory of the movement differs across countries and is
often discipline-specific. For example, in the GDR realistic painting per-
sisted as part of socialist realism, whereas neoclassical architecture was
abandoned in the mid-1950s.
18. Boris Groys, Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin: Die gespaltene Kultur in der
Sowjetunion (Munich: C. Hanser, 1988).
19. See Anna-Sabine Ernst, “Erbe und Hypothek: (Alltags-)kulturelle Leitbilder
in der SBZ/DDR 1945–61,” in Kultur und Kulturträger in der DDR: Analysen,
ed. Stiftung Mitteldeutscher Kulturrat (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), 16.
20. See, for example, Walter Ulbricht, Die nationale Mission der DDR und
das geistige Schaffen in unserem Staat (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1965).
21. Malraux (Décret No. 59-889 du 24.07.1959), cited in “Les maisons de la
culture: Principe fondamental de l’action culturelle: Conséquence immédiate
de ce principe,” internal report, Jan. 1965, p. 12, CAC 19840754/1, National
Archives, France. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
22. Ibid., 2.
23. “La France promise à la culture,” Etat Républicain, 14 Oct. 1967.
24. See Dubois, La politique culturelle, 191–98.
25. Even though these were presented as new institutions, the estab-
lishment of maisons de la culture goes back to the 1930s. See Urfalino,
L’invention de la politique culturelle, 23.
26. Joffre Dumazedier, Vers une civilisation du loisir? (Paris: Seuil, 1962).
27. “Maßnahmeplan in Auswertung der Autorenkonferenz des Mitteldeut-
schen Verlages am 24. April in Bitterfeld,” internal report, 1959, BAr-
chB DR1/7841, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Germany. See also John Erhard,
Uta Burggraf, and Werner Geidel, Beiträge zur Entwicklung sozialistischer
Kulturbedürfnisse (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1975).
28. Harald Bühl, Kulturhaus: Interessant, lehrreich, unterhaltend (Berlin:
Verlag Tribüne, 1962), x.
29. See David Crowley and Susan E. Reid, “Style and Socialism: Moder-
nity and Material Culture in Post-war Eastern Europe,” in Style and Social-
ism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-war Eastern Europe, ed. David
Crowley and Susan E. Reid (New York: Berg, 2000), 12.
30. Hans Bentzien, the minister of culture in the first half of the 1960s,
even argued that the Stadthallen should be modeled on the popular
turn-of-the-century Volkshäuser, but that idea was quickly dismissed as
reformist. Meyer, Kulturpaläste und Stadthallen der DDR, 161.
31. Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel, with Dominique Schnapper,
L’amour de l’art: Les musées et leur public (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1966).
32. During the early 1960s, the French Ministry of Culture was at pains to
distinguish its new maisons de la culture from other state-funded collective
facilities being built at the time, in particular the youth centers, or maisons
des jeunes et de la culture. Established by the state department for youth
and sports, these institutions facilitated painting, photography, and theater
workshops and club meetings. Separating such creative and recreational
activities from the high culture of the maisons de la culture was problem-
atic to many policy makers. See Jacques Charpentreau, Pour une politique
culturelle (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1967), 7–15. See also Urfalino,
L’invention de la politique culturelle, 75–78.
33. Studies and Research Department, French Ministry of Culture, Some
Aspects of French Cultural Policy, 15.
34. On the center in Bourges, see André de Baecque, Les maisons de la
culture (Paris: Seghers, 1967), 42–46.
35. “Les maisons de la culture: Principe fondamental de l’action culturelle,” 5.
36. Pierre Moinot, “Etude visant à degager les caracteristiques fondamen-
tales d’une architecture theatrale de notre temps,” May 1961, p. 6, CAC
19840754/1, National Archives, France.
37. “Programmes des maisons de la culture,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui,
no. 112 (Feb./Mar. 1964), 24.
38. Sonrel collaborated with Jean Du Thilleul and Marcel Cogois and the sce-
nographers Demangeat and Candaes. Malraux emphasized the importance of
this project as a prototype in his inauguration speech of 19 March 1966. “Les
maisons de la culture: Historique des premières réalisations (1959–1967),” inter-
nal note, undated (ca. 1967), n.p., CAC 19840754/1, National Archives, France.
39. Baecque, Les maisons de la culture, 47.
40. “Les maisons de la culture: Historique des premières réalisations.”
41. J. Fious, “L’action culturelle,” report, 1965, CAC 19840754/1,
National Archives, France.
42. “Maisons de la culture,” internal note, May 1968, CAC 19840754/3,
National Archives, France.
43. Commission Charte de Villeurbanne, Compte rendu de la réunion du 10
juin à la Maison de la culture d’Amiens, 1968, CAC 19950514/1, National
Archives, France.
44. Francis Raison, “L’action culturelle: Bilan et perspectives,” internal
report, Oct. 1968, p. 15, CAC 19840754/8, National Archives, France.
45. Quoted in André Rollier, “Les centres culturels en France: Réunion
d’experts sur le développement des centres culturels, UNESCO, Budapest,
16–20 July 1968,” p. 10, CAC 19840754/52, National Archives, France.
46. Commission Charte de Villeurbanne, Compte rendu de la réunion du
10 juin à la Maison de la culture d’Amiens.
47. Quoted in Rollier, “Les centres culturels en France,” 4.
48. Ionel Schein, L’espace global polyvalent (Paris: Vincent Fréal, 1970).
49. Raison, “L’action culturelle,” 27.
50. Venencie designed the Maison pour Tous in collaboration with scenog-
rapher C. Demangeat and sculptor M. Rossigneux.
51. For more information on the French new towns, see Kenny Cupers,
The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2014), chap. 5.
52. “Le quartier de Maurepas-Elancourt,” note, undated (ca. 1973), 1701
W 1048, Departmental Archives, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France.
Centralized state funding supplied 43 percent of construction costs; local
authorities contributed 57 percent.
53. “Equipements intégrés Elancourt-Maurepas, prefecture de la region parisienne,”
internal report, undated, CAC 19840756/205, National Archives, France.
54. “Ville nouvelle de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. ‘La maison pour tous’
Quartier des Sept-Mares,” internal report, 1974, n.p., CAC 19840756/205,
National Archives, France.
55. One of the first maisons de la culture proposals on a hexagonal grid
was by the Atelier d’Urbanisme et d’Architecture (AUA), for the maison
de la culture for La Part-Dieu in Lyon. Venencie’s maison des jeunes et de
la culture in Fresnes was already finished by this time. See L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, no. 129 (1966–67), 67–68.
56. Les 7 Mares Elancourt-Maurepas, VNSQY, brochure, undated, p. 2,
CAC 19840756/207, National Archives, France.
57. Nevertheless, such flexible theater spaces were already being con-
tested in France, a result of the controversy surrounding the “factory-like”
Théâtre National de Chaillot, designed by AUA. See “L’espace transform-
able en question,” Techniques et Architecture 310 (Aug./Sept. 1976), 42–78.
58. L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 112 (Feb./Mar. 1964), 28–37; Simon
Tidworth, Theatres: An Architectural and Cultural History (New York:
Praeger, 1973), 196–212.
59. Les 7 Mares Elancourt-Maurepas, VNSQY, 2.
60. This intention mirrored late Brutalist ambitions such as those that
influenced AUA’s design of L’Arlequin in Grenoble.
61. The planners hired ORGANON, a company consisting of four peo-
ple: a writer, a musician, and two actors. See “Etude des types d’animation
pratiques à partir des équipements de la maison pour tous des 7 mares,
Elancourt-Maurepas,” undated (ca. 1977), 1701 W 1366, Departmental
Archives, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France.
62. APASC brought together representatives from the local municipalities,
the planning team, several ministries, and local associations.
63. APASC, Orientations 1976, letter of 24 Feb. 1976, p. 1, 1701 W 1395,
Departmental Archives, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France.
64. “Etude des types d’animation pratiques,” 25.
65. “Culture does not propagate itself only through a sort of game of con-
centric circles. That process does not work for those who this language
cannot touch.” Rapport du Groupe culture, Commissariat général du Plan,
Apr. 1976, p. 8, CAC 19840754/23, National Archives, France.
66. Alexander Karrash, Die “Nationale Bautradition” denken: Architekturide-
ologie und Sozialistischer Realismus in der DDR der Fünfziger Jahre (Berlin:
Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2014).
67. The late 1940s saw a brief period of experimentation with modernism,
including by architects such as Hermann Henselmann, who subsequently
designed projects in the neoclassical style.
68. In December 1950, a competition for a Kulturhaus prototype was organ-
ized, and the results were published as a series of guidelines in Deutsche
Architektur, no. 4 (1953). Schriftwechsel des Institutes mit verschiedenen
Ministerien über die Projektierung und den Bau von Kulturhäusern,
1951–54, BArchB DH2/3065, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Germany.
T H E C U LT U R A L C E N T E R 483
 69. Even though Brecht did not produce his best-known work during his
GDR years, the impact he had on East German theater in subsequent dec-
ades was considerable, not only because he had trained the next generation
of theater makers but also because his wife, Helene Weigel, continued to
work at the Berliner Ensemble for decades after Brecht’s death. Wilhelm
Hortmann, “Revolutions in Scenography on the German Stage in the Twen-
tieth Century,” in A History of German Theatre, ed. Simon Williams and Maik
Hamburger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 298–300.
70. Josef Kaiser, “Die Methode des sozialistischen Realismus in der
Architektur, am praktischen Beispiel eines Typenentwurfes für ein
Kulturhaus mit 300 Saalplätzen, Berlin,” July 1954, pp. 15–17, BArchB
DH2/3358, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Germany.
71. Kulturhaus Rüdersdorf, 1954, folder, BArchB DH1/38623, Bundesarchiv
Berlin, Germany.
72. Entwurf für einen Plan der notwendigen Maßnahmen zur Einrich-
tung eines Instituts für Forschung und Entwicklung auf dem Gebiet der
Theatertechnik und Aufgaben des Instituts, 1960, BArchB DR1/5776,
Bundesarchiv Berlin, Germany.
73. See William F. Condee and Thomas Irmer, “Experiments with Archi-
tectural Space in the German Theatre,” in Williams and Hamburger,
A History of German Theatre, 248–74; Wendell Cole, “The Theatre Projects
of Walter Gropius,” Educational Theatre Journal 15, no. 4 (Dec. 1963), 311–17.
Even though Brecht’s ideas were situated in such modernism, his GDR-era
Berliner Ensemble insisted on using an old theater building. See Iain Mack-
intosh, Architecture, Actor and Audience (London: Routledge, 1993), 79.
74. “Das Großkulturhaus mit Mehrzwecksaal,” Scena, no. 5 (1963), 3.
75. Flierl, “Das Kulturhaus in der DDR.”
76. These first designs resulted from a competition. See Prof. Hemmer-
ling and Dipl.-Ing. Wever, “Stellungnahme zu den bisher durchgeführten
Projektierungsarbeiten für das Haus der sozialistischen Kultur Dresden
und Befürwortung der Weiterprojektierung, 08.12.1962, Berlin,” report,
p. 2, BArchB DH2/20254, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Germany.
77. Sitzung des Preisgericthes am 12.07.1960, internal note, BArch DH
2 II/07-3/8, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Germany; Thesen des Rates der Stadt
für die Grundkonzeption “HdK,” 22.7.1960, internal note, 114310 RdB
Dresden, BT: 5449, Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Germany.
78. Deutsche Architektur, no. 4 (1968), 212–18.
79. “Haus der sozialistischen Kultur, Dresden: Aufgabenstellung nach
Anordnung no. 6 zur Vorbereitung und Durchführung des Investitions-
planes vom 14.03.1959,” report, 114310 RdB Dresden, BT: 5449, Haupt-
staatsarchiv Dresden, Germany.
80. Hemmerling and Wever, “Stellungnahme zu den bisher durchgeführten
Projektierungsarbeiten für das Haus der sozialistischen Kultur Dresden,” 2.
81. Wladimir Rubinow, “Flexibilität des Mehrzwecksaales,” Scena, no. 26
(1971), 4–12.
82. Manfred Schröter and Wolfgang Grösel, Dresden Kulturpalast (Leipzig:
Seemann, 1974), 2.
83. Institut für Kulturbauten, 1971–80, folder, BArchB DR1/17912, Bundes-
archiv Berlin, Germany.
84. Wladimir Rubinow et al., Kulturelle Einrichtungen in gesellschaftlichen
Zentren: Grundlagen für den Neubau und die Rekonstruktion von Kulturbau-
ten (Berlin: Institut für Kulturbauten, 1975). On the Dronten project, see
Marina van den Bergen and Piet Vollaard, Hinder en Ontklontering: Archi-
tectuur en Maatschappij in het werk van Frank van Klingeren (Rotterdam:
Uitgeverij 010, 2003), 100–111.
85. See Karl Joachim Beuchel, Die Stadt mit dem Monument: Dokumente
und Notizen eines Stadtbaudirektors zur Baugeschichte von Chemnitz/Karl-
Marx-Stadt zwischen 1945 und 1990 (Chemnitz: Dämmig, 2006).
86. See Lothar Hahn, “Gestaltung und Aufbau des Zentrums von Karl-
Marx-Stadt,” Deutsche Architektur, no. 7 (1959), 362–65.
484 J S A H | 74 . 4 | D E C E M B E R 2 01 5
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87. Erarbeitung von Gestaltungsvorschlägen für das HKW der Bezirkshaupt-
stadt Karl-Marx-Stadt, 15.03.1962, 33842, Staatsarchiv Chemnitz, Germany.
88. Pfefferkorn, Grobe, überschlägige Betrachtung zu Nutzungsmöglich-
keiten und Nutzeffekt des Hochhausteiles des HKW Karl-Marx-Stadt,
5.10.1964, 28469, Staatsarchiv Chemnitz, Germany.
89. “Volkswirtschaftliche Aufgabenstellung für des Investitionsvorhaben,”
report, undated, 28470, Staatsarchiv Chemnitz, Germany.
90. Vorlage für die Sitzung der Plankommission, 02.10.1961, Vorberei-
tung des Baus “Haus der Kultur und Wissenschaften” in Karl-Marx-Stadt,
1614, Stadtarchiv Chemnitz, Germany.
91. Wladimir S. Rubinow, “Die Stadthalle Karl-Marx-Stadt,” Bauten der
Kultur, no. 1 (1976), 21.
92. Rat der Stadt Karl-Marx-Stadt, Inhaltliche Konzeption zur Nutzung
der Stadthalle Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1973, p. 4, 12030, Stadtarchiv Chemnitz,
Germany.
93. Rubinow, “Die Stadthalle Karl-Marx-Stadt,” 18.
94. “Zu einigen Erkenntnissen über die Unterhaltungskunst,” letter from
Direktor Haase to the minister of culture, 30.12.1977, 5305, Stadtarchiv
Chemnitz, Germany; Konzeptionen zur Entwicklung des geistig-kul-
turellen Lebens und des künstlerischen Volksschaffens, 1976–80, 5318,
Stadtarchiv Chemnitz, Germany.
95. Meyer, Kulturpaläste und Stadthallen der DDR, 176.
96. Joachim Näther, director of the Institut für Kulturbauten after 1974,
oversaw the publication of six handbooks for the construction of cul-
tural facilities throughout the GDR. See, for example, Dieter Schölzel,
Kulturhäuser und Klubs: Grundlagen für den Neubau und die Rekonstruktion
von Kulturbauten (Berlin: Institut für Kulturbauten, 1975).
97. Leo Fiege, Zum Platz territorialer kultureller Einrichtungen im Proceß der
sozialistischen Kulturentwicklung (Berlin: Akademie für Weiterbildung bein
Ministerium für Kultur, 1977).
98. Rubinow et al., Kulturelle Einrichtungen in gesellschaftlichen Zentren.
99. Werner Prendel, Gesellschaftliche Bauten: Einrichtungen der Bildung,
Kultur, Versorgung, Gesundheit und Erholung (Berlin: Verlag fur Bauwesen,
1974), 67.
100. Ibid., 129.
101. The GDR reportedly had 600 to 1,100 Kulturhäuser. Even if these
institutions served to legitimate the state apparatus, they did more than
just represent official propaganda, or “party culture.” Thomas Ruben and
Bernd Wagner, “Kulturhäuser in Brandenburg: Bestandsaufnahme und
Problemanalyse,” in Kulturhäuser in Brandenburg: Eine Bestandsaufnahme,
ed. Thomas Ruben and Bernd Wagner (Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-
Brandenburg, 1994), 14.
102. Schölzel, Kulturhäuser und Klubs, 13.
103. UNESCO, Cultural Policy, 8.
104. Ibid., 30, 48.
105. “Journées d’études Franco-Polonaises sur l’utilisation culturelle des
loisirs, 18–21 mars 1969, Maison de l’UNESCO, Paris,” report, p. 13,
CAC 19840754/52, National Archives, France.
106. The Council of Europe created the Council for Cultural Co-oper-
ation in January 1962 to draw up proposals for the Council of Europe’s
cultural policy. See Council for Cultural Co-operation, Managing Facilities
for Cultural Democracy: Symposium on “Methods of Managing Socio-cultural
Facilities to Be Applied in Pilot Experiments” (San Remo, 26–29 Apr. 1972)
(Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1973).
107. Stephen Mennell, Cultural Policy in Towns: A Report on the Council of
Europe’s “Experimental Study of Cultural Development in European Towns”
(Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1976), 13.
108. Jacques Coenen, Leisure and Socio-cultural Facilities (Strasbourg:
Council of Europe, 1970).
109. Mennell, Cultural Policy in Towns, 13.